Difference between revisions of "Beast Forms"

Revision as of 15:21, 15 June 2021

Beast Forms are a unique feature of the skill system in Project: Gorgon. Beast Forms are transformations which can be discovered from consuming potions, failing to defeat specific bosses, participating in events, or leveling skills. While technically curses, many consider Beast Forms to be viable, powerful alternatives to living life in a humanoid form.

Skill Characterization

Cow

• Cows are viewed as a traditional tank archetype. Abilities such as Tough Hoof and Chew Cud help Cows improve their survivability in longer fights. Cows also have the sprint ability Moo of Determination, and the the ability to produce their own milk.
• 

   

  Bottle of Milk
  is a valuable item used in crafting skills such as Cooking and Cheesemaking. Cows with a Vegetarian badge can produce milk faster than cows with a varied diet, however skill level and the version of Collect Milk used also impact collection times.
• Adventurers can also milk cows, however consent must be given.

Deer

• Deer is considered to be a good foundation for an off-tank. While cows receive overt tank abilities, survivability in deer primarily comes from Deer Treasure Effects on equipment. Deer have the ability to jump faster and higher than other land-based Beast Forms using Bounding Escape. They also have AoE taunts, while cows only have single target taunts.
• Deer can use the ability Summon Deer to summon a wild deer to help them in battle.
• Some deer are actually Druids, using the Deer Form toggle ability.

Spider

• Spider form is useful for DPS/Assassin type builds. Spiders deal predominantly Crushing and Poison damage to quickly defeat enemies. Many spiders rely on Incubate, an ability that injects eggs inside enemies, dealing massive damage and spawning a pet spider. Spiders spawned through this ability will aid their parent in battle.
• Spiders have the ability to use Insidious Illusion to temporarily talk with Animal Hating NPCs. This ability has a 20 minute cooldown and consumes a
  

   

  Moonstone
  each time it is used.
• 

   

  Spiderweb
  can be produced by Level 60 Spiders using Webspin. This ability can give spiders an advantage in Textile Creation and Tailoring, which is helpful if they want to craft the spider-form Spider Casing equipment.

Pig

• Pigs are often equipped for supporting roles. While they can hold their own individually, they shine in groups as healers or buff builders using a combination of Mudbath, Frenzy, and Porcine Alertness.
• The speed-boosting sidebar ability Terror Dash is often used by pigs escaping dangerous situations, or traveling across large regions of Alharth.
• A variety of mushrooms can be found by pigs using the Truffle Sniff abilities.

Rabbit

• Normally, rabbits are stealthy creatures. Using Play Dead, a rabbit can force enemies to ignore it for a few seconds. Traveling through dangerous areas, rabbits may alternate between the speed-increasing Hare Dash and the speed-reducing Long Ear, which slows a rabbit down in exchange for reducing the detection range of nearby foes.
• Rabbits are the only Beast Form capable of using Ice Magic. A special headgear item is required to activate this synergy.

Giant Bat

• Giant Bats have access to a variety of tools, including knock-back, recovery, heavy damage, and concussion abilities. These options made Giant Bat compatible with many skills.
• Giant Bats can use Echolocation, which allows them to see in the dark. This ability is especially useful in area like the deeper parts of the Labyrinth in Ilmari.
• Giant Bats also have the ability to fly, and to infect others in PVP with a disease which will eventually turn them into a bat.

Lycanthropy

• Lycanthropy is unusual among the Beast Forms, as it is a permanent alteration. There will never be a method to remove Lycanthropy from a character, so be sure to understand the risks and rewards before accepting the blessing of Norala.
• Individuals infected with Lycanthropy can switch between humanoid and wolf form without too much effort, however they will be locked into wolf form during the Full Moon.
• While in wolf form, Lycanthropes have access to powerful slashing, crushing, and trauma attacks.
• Howl Mode allows packs of wolf-form lycanthropes to build up impressive combat-improving buffs.

Spirit Fox

• Spirit Fox are tricksters, using abilities including Dimensional Snare to immobilize targets and Blur Step to boost their melee evasion during combat. In combat, Spirit Fox deal mostly Crushing and Darkness damage.
• Spirit Fox can use Illusive Guise to disguise themselves in a humanoid projection for a short time. This allows them to interact with Animal Hating NPCs.

Druid Forms

• Druids can magically project themselves as Deer, as well as a variety of birds including Raven and Mallard. However, these are NOT Beast Forms.

Beast Form Mechanics

Familiar's Recall

Icon	Level	Name	Description	Special	Effects	Stats	Source
	0	Familiar's Recall	Sends you back to your master. You must be a long-term animal with a bonded master, and you must be wearing a Familiar Recall Collar.	Can Be On Sidebar		Power Cost: 50 Range: 5 Cooldown: 1800	???

Using a Recall Collar, a character using one of the Beast Forms may directly teleport to their master using the Familiar's Recall ability. This ability can be used from anywhere, as long as the player has been in animal form for the past 3 hours of in-game real time.

This ability is learned from their master:

• Cinnamon the rabbit in Animal Town is currently the only NPC offering a bond, but he implies that other NPCs will offer this service in the future.

Recall Collars

Beast Skills

Beast Speech

One of the disadvantages of becoming a Beast Form is Beast Speech. When the skill is low, random words spoken in chat will be replaced by an animal sound of the same length. For example, a cow sending "I need help, can you meet me at the Serbule Well" might be sent as "I moooo moooo, can moo meet me at the moooooooo moooo?", which is rather inconvenient! The words replaced are random, and as Beast Speech is leveled, the frequency of swapped words is reduced dramatically.

• Spirit Fox are not afflicted with Beast Speech, as their transformation results is something not-quite a physical form.

Survival Instincts

Survival Instincts is a utility skill which provides sidebar abilities.

• Toughen Up provides an alternative to Armor Patching.
• Toxic Flesh causes incoming melee attacks to inflict the attacker with poison.
• Lend Grace improves evasion and regenerates power.

Beast Metabolism

Beast Metabolism is a skill used only by Lycanthropes. This skill levels as they consume the corpses of defeated enemies.

Warden

Warden is a combat skill exclusively available to Beast Forms. This skill deals Electricity, Fire, and Acid damage.

• To learn the Warden skill you must have [Friends] or higher favor with Suspicious Cow in Eltibule, Red in Kur, or Norbert in Animal Town in Sun Vale. Speak with one of those NPCs with whom you have sufficient favor, and complete a series of quests to become a Warden

Beast Form Equipment

Look Marna, No Hands!

As an animal, you no longer have the ability to use skills that require handheld weapons, such as Sword, Fire Magic, or Shield.

• The lack of hands also prevents animals from gathering wood and collecting milk from milkable animals.
• Beast Forms seeking to use Necromancy or Priest will be unable to use common Necromancy Orbs or Priest Staffs. Necklaces with Necromancy Gems or Holy Symbols can be used by animals.

Crafting Equipment for Beast Forms

When magical equipment is crafted, two gemstones are required to select the skills that Treasure Effects will be generated for. While most skills have gems easily obtained through surveying, animals require an additional step, rune-infused gems.

• Sigil Scripting recipes taught by Preta in Sun Vale must be used to attune common gems to Beast Forms. Level 25 Sigil Scripting is required to produce the inscribed rune-infused gems.

Bat Malachite	Cow Malachite	Deer Malachite
Pig Malachite	Rabbit Malachite	Spider Malachite
Spirit Fox Lapis

Animal-Specific Equipment

Most Beast Forms have armor or equipment that can only be worn by that form. Usually, this includes Racial Jewelry, however some forms have armor that changes them visually. Check individual pages of the Beast Forms for complete lists of their special equipment.

• Cows have access to crafted Champron (headwear) & Barding(chest armor), which gives them the appearance of an armored cow.
• Deer can equip Alicorns such as
  

   

  Greenberg's Horn
  , which add a centered horn to their forehead.
• Spiders can wear crafted Spider Casings, which can change their carapace color if Decent quality or better.
• Pigs can wear Porkpie Hats created through Tailoring.
• Rabbit - No visual equipment.
• Giant Bats can equip Witch Hats crafted through Tailoring.
• Lycanthropy afflicted characters can wear a complete set of five armor pieces while in wolf form. This armor is crafted through Blacksmithing.
• Spirit Fox - No visual equipment.

Animal Town

Animal Town is a hidden refuge in Sun Vale populated by various species of talking animals. Some of the residents are Awakened, while others are were-creatures, or were granted intelligence by unknown methods. Humans, Rakshasa, Orcs, Fairies, and Elves are forbidden from entering the town, and will be forcibly removed by the deadly Summoned Guardians.

Individuals who have recently transformed into one of the Beast Forms will find themselves unable to speak with most NPCs in Animal Town until 180 real-world minutes have been played. If you loose track of the time you transformed, Norbert the pig can tell you when the other residents will tolerate talking with you!

• Befriending the residents of Animal Town is highly encouraged for all Beast Forms who wish to remain in their forms long-term. The NPCs of the town offer training of Beast Skills, abilities, and provide storage exclusive to Beast Forms.

Returning to Human Form (temporarily)

In order to make "being an animal" a viable path through the entire game, the next update (Sept 2014) adds some high-level Words of Power that can help. These Words apply an illusion to you that makes you look like a human for a minute or so -- just long enough to talk to NPCs that ignore animals!

Completing quests this way is a fairly laborious process, because you have to research the Words and each Word is usable only once. It is intended that being an animal is a hard play style. The "human form" Words of Power just ensure that animals can access important skills and equipment that they will need at higher level, even though it will be a bit of a pain.

Spiders can learn the 'Illusion' spell (that consumes one moonstone each time) to assume a human form illusion for a limited time.

To permanently undo the transformation to Cow, a player will have the kill the Maronesa boss in the Crystal Cavern.
To undo the transformation to a Deer, Rabbit or a Pig, a player will have to obtain a random drop Un-Deer potion or Un-Pig potion and drink that.
To undo the transformation to a Spider the player will have to obtain an Un Spider potion from the Strange Spider in Serbule Crypts (who is guarded by the tough Rhino Guardian).
Please note: once a player has transformed to a Lycan (wolf), that CANNOT be undone !

Seek out special NPC's

There are unique opportunities for animal players. For instance, if you're playing as a Cow, Deer, or Pig, seek out the Suspicious Cow, an NPC cow in the fields of Eltibule. She can sell you some animal-specific abilities, and even has a unique dye recipe that is otherwise unobtainable ("drab grass green"). She also sells belts for each of those animal forms. Werewolves should look for Sanja the wolf, in the forests off the coast of Kur. And every animal player will find it helpful to talk to Flia, a fairy in the wilds of Serbule.

NPC & Animal Interactions

Certain NPCs will not speak to you while you are an animal. Especially the ones in Serbule. (Note: This also has the consequence that the storage for Joeh, Marna, Ivyn and Tadion may not be available. At the moment those storages are available to animals through the Serbule central storage closet in the room between Hulon and Marna). But to counter that there are Animal NPCs in Animal Town which is in Sun Vale, who will speak to you, but only after you have been an Animal for 3 in game hours.

NPC Shopkeepers that speak to Beast Forms

NPCs that speak to Beast Forms and are not Shopkeepers

General Tips for Beast Forms

For general advice, avoid playing as an animal unless absolutely certain, and after you have explored zones such as Serbule and Etilbule as a human, and gotten at least some storage space, NPC favors done, and gotten used to the general feel of the game. Because starting off as an Animal can be hard or trying for a new player.

Be aware that the Animal Forms stack. If you are a cow, and drink a Deer Juice potion, you will appear to be a Deer. However you are also still cursed as a Cow. So after drinking an Un-Deer Juice, you will not be in human form, but will be a Cow again.

When just starting animal say something in Nearby chat every 5 min or so. That way you will get exp in your Beast Speech, and won't bother people in Global. You can also set up a new chat-channel with a unique name and use that as a private channel to randomly type in, to level up Beast Speech.

To (some) animals Joeh will not talk. Thus causing a problem for those players when trying to sell gear loot-drops. Please know that Roshun the Traitor talks to animals and also buys gear.

Storage unlocked in Serbule (from Joeh, Ivyn or Marna) will seem to be unavailable to animals since those NPC's wont talk to them. That storage can be accessed (at least as of the moment this is written) through the Bookshelf (between Marna's and Hulon's house).

3-sylabe word of powers include ones that will grant you illusion, making you look like elf for 2 min. can be helpfull when talking to NPCs. Note that Spiders can learn a spell Illusion (that consumes a moonstone) to take human form for some minutes.

You definately should start working on favor in Animal Town asap, especialy if you are full time animal (eg - not wolf)

Trivia

Animal forms (and specifically Cow at first), was at first 'a fluke' by the Dev's. Citan / Eric originally only intended the Animal forms to be a very temporary curse. Intended only as 'punishment' and to be cured ASAP.
He / they were surprised to find that certain players wanted to continue playing in that animal form. And subsequently the different animal forms and their abilities and playstyle were further developed.

Sources

• Making Armor Pt 2